


Free Fall

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-18
Updated: 2010-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>coda to 5.19. Sam's falling towards the future, but he's back on solid ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Fall

**Author's Note:**

> written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/summer_sam_love/profile)[ **summer_sam_love**](http://community.livejournal.com/summer_sam_love/) 's 2010 celebration

  
Sam’s sneakers are still squelching wetly as he climbs into the car, and the inside of his collar chafes damply against the back of his neck. He has no idea how long it’s been since they’d ducked out of the downpour into the Elysian Fields Hotel. The images of the night, gods, Gabriel, and Lucifer, are swimming dizzily behind his eyes. However much time has passed, it wasn’t enough for his shoes to dry. Dean turns up the heat and leaves the music off. Sam’s throat is sore, his head pounding with a slow beat that takes the place of Dean’s heavy metal. He’s getting sick, no doubt about it. It doesn’t seem important, not compared to getting the hell out of this place and leaving Lucifer behind.

They drive the rest of the night and on into next day. A little after it gets light they pull over and watch Gabriel’s parting gift, the laptop balanced precariously on the roof of the car. It’s the first solid lead they’ve had since the disaster of the Colt. An archangel in a gigolo suit is offering them a chance at closing the crack Sam opened in the world, the crevasse everything is falling into. Of maybe fixing something. Sam looks at the trickster’s face on the screen and gratitude mixes sharply with the familiar, weary surge of hatred. They get back into the car and drive again. They still have no concrete destination, but maybe they’re getting somewhere.

The fever Sam knows he’s running is oddly comforting, a tight weave of heat shot with chills, singing along with the tires, rising and dipping in his head like the wires by the highway. He can see Lucifer coming towards him, gods falling like dominoes, but the devil won’t catch up, not right now, Sam’s safe in the humming warmth of the Impala, Dean beside him.

The road reels out endlessly. Sam sleeps and dreams of falling, but somehow he isn’t afraid.

They draw up at a motel in the late afternoon. Sam hardly realizes the car has stopped; he’s watching fat grey drops crawl down the window. It’s raining again. It’s only when cool, damp air hits him that Sam realizes that Dean has opened his door. Dean’s holding two plastic room keys, he must have already checked in. He’s frowning at Sam.

“Sam? You all right? Sam?”

Time to confess. Getting sick may be an unimportant detail, but it’s the kind of detail Dean likes to be informed of. “Think I have a fever. Must be coming down with something.”

Dean’s hand on his forehead is comforting and absurdly familiar. So is the sigh of exasperation that follows. Sam wants to clutch them, the way he’s grabbing instinctively for Dean’s jacket as Dean hauls him out of the car.

“Yeah, you do. Moron. This is why you need to eat and sleep and stuff.” Ha. Dean’s one to talk, he’s been running on fumes for two years. But he’s steady and present now, bracing Sam while they walk to the door and Dean slides the card into the lock.

Sam stumbles into the room with his arm across Dean’s shoulders and lets himself be tipped onto the bed. He closes his eyes against a psychedelic swirl of tulip-themed decor and locates himself instead by the quiet, efficient sounds of Dean coming and going, lugging in their stuff, then moving around the room. There’s the zipper of a duffel, water running into a glass, the click of a plastic lid and the rattle of pills. The bed dips as Dean sits beside him and Sam doesn’t have to open his eyes to sit up, stretching his hand for the pills and then the water. Small, reliable miracles.

The whole time Dean was gone, way back when the trickster – no, Gabriel – had taken him away from Sam, Sam had set the world in order, lined everything up precisely, nothing too near the edge. Still, it was always sliding, all of it, collapsing at the center. That was how it had felt, again, these last few weeks, since heaven. Watching Dean slip away towards Michael and Yes. Knowing he was nothing Dean could hold onto, not since he’d forfeited Dean’s trust, left Dean with no use for his. That the line had held after all, that Dean had come back, it’s like having gravity slot back into place after months of free fall.

And now, maybe, they have a way to fight back. But the trickster won’t be what saves them, not really. Flashy bastard, with his grand gesture.

Dean’s settled on the other bed now. Sam listens with fever-sharp ears to shifts and clinks, the shush of chamois cloth, the faint rasp of a brush. The musty motel air carries the familiar scent of gun oil. Dean’s tending the weapons. As much as the Impala, thousands of days of these routines are their constant.

“Think we’ll be able to do it?” Sam asks the fire-shot darkness behind his eyelids.

Dean doesn’t ask him what he’s talking about, doesn’t tell him to shut up and go to sleep, he’s sick. “Took down War, and he was the cool one,” he says, “Took down Famine, and, man, that was one creepy dude. Death and Pestilence, piece of cake.” Sam hears a low, half-musical tone as Dean blows across the muzzle of a gun, then the click as he reassembles it.

“What about Lucifer?” But Sam doesn’t ask it. Because that one is on him. Somewhere in the back of his mind is a sheer edge. He’s walking towards it, stepping over, choice like vertigo and solid ground at once, the fever buoying him up. Dean’s sharpening his knife now, the sound skating in circles over the whetstone, over and over. Danger and safety.

“You know,” he says, tossing out words to Dean, because Dean will catch them, Dean will toss them back to him and he can catch them in turn, like a rope, they’re good with the rope tricks, “Gabriel totally ripped off the rings thing from Tolkien. We really going with a plan that’s plagiarized?”

“Don’t knock the classics, Sammy,” says Dean easily. There’s a clunk as he sets the whetstone down on the table, and a faint rustle as he slips the knife under his pillow. The light clicks off, and the bedsprings creak as Dean settles. “You going to put that fever of yours to sleep any time soon? ‘Cause you’ve got to be delirious, objecting to a tried and true classic like magic rings. Next thing you’ll be saying you don’t want to blow up the Death Star.”

Sam laughs, even though it hurts his throat. He wants to go on, spin the conversation out all night, make contingency plans for when Lucifer comes after them with a killer rabbit or a pointed stick, but he’s spiraling down into sleep. It’s OK, he’s not going to fall. 


End file.
